Comments on: Should bicycle lanes be abolished?

By: Biking Uphill Is Satisfying, and Other Bicycle Research From TRB 2013 | New York Bicycling CoalitionNew York Bicycling Coalition

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:06:02 +0000

...] Bring transportation officials from your hometown to Copenhagen to gawk at all the “non-fat non-motorists.” Photo: Crikey [...

By: Tallycyclist

Tallycyclist — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 04:20:16 +0000

Here’s a great article explaining what it means to “share the street” with cars on a bike in the Netherlands: http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2011/10/transformation-of-city-centre-street.html

Yes, the vast majority of streets in both Denmark and the Netherlands don’t have separated bike lanes or regular on-road bike lanes. This is because those streets don’t need them. I’ve biked in Copenhagen and the streets without any infrastructure had so few cars it wasn’t a big deal. The speed limit was slow and sometimes there were even barriers to make drivers, but not cyclist, slow down. They generally only have separated paths on the major and medium-sized roads. Obviously, small neighborhood roads aren’t going to need them most of the time, yet if you factor these roads into the total road system, it’s going to be a very big percentage of the picture.

This is hardly the same as large/medium sized roads, or even minor ones easy for rat running, in the US with high speed limits and no amenities for cyclist. It also helps that most people in those two countries are cyclist, so the general attitude is very different. So you are correct with your statement, but it needs more explanation or it can be very misleading.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 09 May 2010 11:53:54 +0000

It’s hard to know where to stand on this issue. I ride in bicycle lanes for about half my commute. The road system in general isn’t designed with cycling in mind and the road rules aren’t written for commuter cyclists either. I will always stop for red lights and make the best effort to signal, make eye contact with drivers and share the roads, but it’s not possible to really cycle completely within the laws. There are for instance places like the corner of Grattan st. and Exhibition st. where cyclists are forced to use part of the footpath to get to Canning st. Cyclists just fall into a grey area, which is probably for the best. I’m sure if an attempt was made to solve these issues cyclists would come out worse as bikes aren’t really considered as legitimate road users by most motorists. So I don’t expect anything to change unless the numbers of cyclists increases dramatically (unlikely unless petrol increases).

By: Andrew(AJH)

Andrew(AJH) — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:27:18 +0000

I am a cyclist who also tends to spend a significant amount of time on many local streets out of the bike lane. The main reason for this is that the local councils never (well rarely) clean the streets in Melbourne and the bike lanes seem to become the home of every bit of glass, metal and other debris that make cycling in the bike lane very unattractive. On many occasions this results in abuse from drivers who obviously think that I should be in the bike lane. I agree that riding on smaller local roads without bike lanes can be done quite safely, and it is definitely safer to assert yourself a little, rather than “hugging the gutter”.